1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to power control systems for integrated circuits and in particular to prevention of electrostatic discharge damage to integrated circuits without a pad ring.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional integrated circuits, electrostatic discharge (ESD) events typically enter the circuitry through the pad ring, which dissipates the charge before reaching the core. Some recently developed integrated circuits, however, must necessarily expose the core of the circuitry to ESD events. Fingerprint sensors, for example, usually contain a two-dimensional array of sensing electrodes proximate to a sensing surface on which the finger is placed, where the sensing electrodes are closely connected to the core circuitry controlling acquisition of a fingerprint image. The exposure to electrostatic discharge events resulting from a finger touching the sensing surface is necessitated by the need for contact with the finger in order to detect fingerprint features. For this reason, integrated circuit fingerprint sensors are subject to entering a latchup condition (caused by an ESD event or other disturbance), during which excessive power flows and the sensor may be damaged or the user burned.
Where the fingerprint sensor is connected to another device, such as a processor or other controller, the same ESD event which causes the fingerprint sensor to enter a latchup condition may cause the connected device to malfunction (e.g., cause the processor/controller to crash). In many cases, the processor or controller may not be configured to automatically recover from such malfunctions. Moreover, some connectivity architectures, such as the Universal Serial Bus (USB) architecture, require a processor to control data communications between a peripheral input/output (I/O) device and a host system. While peripherals are automatically detected and initialized by the host system when first physically connected to a USB port, detection of a malfunction within the peripheral by the host system and recovery from the malfunction through reinitialization are usually not automatic. Instead, either physical disconnection of the peripheral from the USB port followed by reconnection or manual rebooting of the host system may be required to recover from the malfunction.
It would be desirable, therefore, to protect both the fingerprint sensor and the user from possible consequences of an ESD event and/or a latchup condition and to automatically recover from the occurrence of such an event or condition.
Current drawn by the fingerprint sensor subject to electrostatic discharge events not fully dissipated by a pad ring is monitored. Upon detection of an overcurrent (e.g., an increase in the current drawn by approximately an order of magnitude) indicating that a latchup condition has occurred, power is removed from the sensor, together with all inputs to the sensor, until the latchup condition is cleared. If a processor or controller is employed by the sensor, the processor or controller is concurrently reset since a firmware crash may be induced by the latchup condition. If a parallel port or other communications connection is employed by the sensor, the overcurrent signal is employed to directly disconnect power and input signals to the sensor.